Utah less Mormon than ever

The Salt Lake Tribune/November 18, 2007

By Matt Canham

Not since the pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley 160 years
ago has Utah's population been less Mormon than it is now.

The percentage of Utahns who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints has declined every year for at least the last 18
years, according to membership numbers the LDS Church provides the
state for demographic purposes.

Utah's Mormon population fell to 60.7 percent this year, according to
estimates released Thursday, a mark lower than any publicly available
record shows. The previous low was 61.3 percent in 1910 at the height
of a mining boom that attracted non-Mormon workers in droves.

If the trend holds, Mormons will make up less than half of Utah's
population by 2030.

This steady demographic shift will undoubtedly have major impacts on
the psyche of Utah Mormons, the makeup of neighborhoods, the state's
political landscape and possibly even missionary efforts
internationally.

Academics and prominent Mormons may have different ideas on what those
impacts will be, but they do agree that the LDS Church can't stop its
home state from becoming less and less Mormon.

"It will always be a dominant center for that religion," said Pam
Perlich, a demographer at the University of Utah. "That is not going
to change, but a slow, steady decline of the Mormon share will
continue as long as the state grows."

And Utah is really growing. More people moved into Utah this year than
ever before. The state is experiencing record job growth and record
births. Some of those people are Mormon, but not most.

A new Utahn - either a person born in the state or someone who moves
here - is almost twice as likely to be non-Mormon as Mormon, according
to a Salt Lake Tribune analysis.

In 1989, the earliest the state kept the membership records, 500,000
Utahns were not Mormon. That number has now surpassed 1 million.

LDS Church officials declined to comment on this trend.

Philip Barlow, a professor of Mormon history and culture at Utah State
University, points out that: "Dominance is not the same as majority."

"The Saints will likely surrender majority status in the state within
a couple of decades," he said. "But its members are apt to remain the
dominant social/political force, albeit in diluted fashion, for the
foreseeable future."

That force will be stronger in some areas than in others. Fewer
Mormons live in Salt Lake County this year than last year, even as the
population grew by more than 20,000 people. While Utah and Davis
counties showed strong LDS growth. This "clustering" will have
political consequences as the Mormon majority continues to shrink,
causing Utah to become less conservative, said Kelly Patterson, a
political scientist at Brigham Young University.

He expects that political change to lag behind the population shift
because of the organization dominance of the Republican Party. Three
decades of GOP rule has reduced the skill and resources of the
Democratic Party, which will have to fight to catch up even as it
identifies more supporters, particularly in Salt Lake County.

Also, Patterson says, Mormons vote at higher rates than non-Mormons,
which will give them a larger influence than even their numbers
suggest.

BYU exit polls show that 68.8 percent of voters in 2006 were Mormon, a
decline from 75.5 percent 20 years ago, but still above their numbers
in the community.

Patterson expects the slow rise of the Democratic Party and the
growing non-Mormon population in Salt Lake County compared with its
urban neighbors to result in more political clashes, which he sees as
a healthy thing.

"A competitive two-party system seems to serve democracy better in the
long run," he said.

But those clashes may not be so favorable to the LDS Church, said
Stuart Reid, a Mormon bishop in Ogden who previously ran for Salt Lake
City mayor and for the state Senate.

He foresees "more debate, more confrontation and more controversy,"
which will reach people all over the world through the Internet.

"For the church, it makes it more challenging in trying to establish
an example of the gospel principles as they are lived out," Reid said.

And whether the church likes it or not, people living outside of Utah
link Salt Lake City with Mormons.

Reid, who once lobbied on behalf of the LDS Church on state and
federal issues, said more political discussion about gay rights or
alcohol laws could make potential converts elsewhere wonder why the
LDS Church can't persuade the people living around its headquarters to
follow its principles.

Barlow said the declining percentages will have a "symbolically,
psychologically powerful" impact on Mormons. They have been taught
"about the Kingdom of God expanding and rolling forth into all the
earth," which implies a growing proportion of the population, not a
shrinking one.

But church officials could turn this trend into an advantage as well.
For years, church authorities - including President Gordon B. Hinckley
- have talked about the LDS Church as a global faith. Decreasing the
link between Utah and the faith could help that, Barlow suggests.

Even though the LDS majority in Utah is shrinking, the numbers may
still overestimate the reality.

Barlow estimates that of the 1.6 million Mormons in Utah, roughly half
of them have little if any contact with the church. That doesn't
surprise Reid, who says Utah is full of "the very best Mormons and the
very weakest Mormons."

As the population continues to change, Utah Mormons will see their
neighborhoods become more religiously diverse, children will have more
non-Mormon friends and consequently more of them will have their faith
tested than ever before.

This will force them one of two ways, Reid said: "You are either going
to become more committed or drop out."

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